The Kickback: Debut Album ‘Sorry All Over The Place’ #kickstarter

After two EPs and a handful of singles, The Kickback is ready to record their debut album!

Sorry All Over The Place is a collection of songs about being terrified of dying, but even more scared of not living. But, you know. Really danceable.

Hi. I’m Billy. The Kickback started in my Criminal Justice book (the name was in a blurb about Enron. Believe it or not, things didn’t turn out so great for those guys) at the University of South Dakota and has since claimed my brother Danny, Washington D.C.-native Eamonn, and Mexico-born Jonny. All I’ve ever wanted to do is make an album of music I was proud to put into the world. All I’ve ever wanted to do is to make recordings that would define moments of your life. All I’ve ever wanted to do is to be your everything, all the time, and without precedent or competition. I want to make a record to make popes (multiple) weep, to make wingless animals fly, and make Michael Keaton notice us and decide to star in all of our music videos for the rest of our lives. And it’s time for us to try.

I can’t actually explain why this means so much to me the same way I can’t explain why “Walk Away Renee” by Left Banke reduced me to tears while riding in a van with my mom around age 7. I understood that after losing a girlfriend in the third grade, I should call the Sioux Falls, SD oldies station and request “Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri-Las and stay up until 10 p.m. (on a school night for God’s sakes) waiting to tape the song on my boombox. I understood that “December, 1963 (Oh What a Night)” by the Four Seasons was probably the greatest song ever written (my 10-year-old Christmas proclamation of 1996). Without music, my sorry life isn’t worth the skin it’s printed on (try shouting that at your wife in the middle of an argument about the volume ofThe Muppet Movie soundtrack in your apartment), and I want to make a record that will make someone feel the same. I want you to hear our record and feel hope/hopeless/doubtful/stupefied/rejected/rewarded/FULL OF EVERYTHING THAT HAS EVER BEEN A FEELING. This seems to be the best way to make that happen.

It ruined Danny and me fairly early on.

We’ve put recordings into the world. Ask a guy in this band how he feels about them.

Please don’t. It’s a touchy subject.

We’ve put out a couple EPs and a few singles, all with budgetary guns pressed so hard to our heads that the inevitable outcome sounded rushed, lifeless, and like the budgetary gun was used instead to shoot ourselves in the foot (to get the most mileage out of a useless metaphor). We’ve decided to do it right, despite how bloated the number may appear to you or how selfish and unnecessary a Kickstarter may seem when there are so many problems to fix in the world. This isn’t a humanitarian effort unless you count the mental health of four frustrated boys in Chicago. If you don’t think we won’t hate ourselves for every minute of this campaign, then boy you didn’t grow up Catholic or Jewish (we’ve got a healthy mix). But if it’s between continually putting out records we don’t believe in and putting out nothing at all, at this point we’re ready to defer to the latter. But just once, we want todo this right. Make a record as God intended.

But we don’t have a label or rich uncles. My desire to make music gets me out of bed in the morning and keeps me from sleeping at night, but wishes and hopes make not a pope weep from the new Kickback record he just heard on his solid gold pope turntable. The pope only weeps if we can afford to do this.

After pooling our collective money, we find ourselves about 16k shy of our goal. Your contribution will help pay for the engineering, the production, the mastering, the PR (eye-roll, yeah, but we have to if we want people to hear it), the packaging, and the distribution of the record. Best case scenario: A label decides to put it out and people are able to hear it all over the world. Worst case scenario: we put it on the Internet and people are able to hear it all over the world. We want to ensure that start-to-finish, what you wind up hearing is the best thing we can offer.

Hey, it’s Jim Eno!

When trying to bring the world to its knees with ecstasy (the emotion), it’s nice to have some help. When we found out that Jim Eno from Spoon (and a bunch of awesome records he’s produced and engineered) liked our demos and was into making our album, I went straight back to age 7 in the car with Mom. One of my heroes wants to help make our album. The one we’re trying to doright. Think of something you love. [Actually do this. Pause for a second, you speed-reading fiend] Now think of the person you think does it as well as it can possibly be done. [Again, give it a sec, Marion Jones] Now imagine them telling you they’d like tohelp youmake something. There’s too many vague pronouns for that to make much sense, but sweet Mary Higgins Clark, maybe you can understand my excitement.

We hope some of the perks we’ve put together might motivate you to help us out, but frankly, you know it doesn’t really cover the cost of your contribution. Please know you’ll be giving life to something that we’ve been trying to achieve since I started putting songs into a Tascam Portastudio cassette recorder. This record isn’t just about us having a group of songs that we’re confident about or working with people that seem to get what we’re trying to do; those situations come and go. We want to make a record thatdoes something to you. It makes you hate your in-laws or pity your life choices or love your neighbor or hug a landlord. If these things we’ve made can’t make you breathe heavy for a minute, we’ll have failed. And this means too much to us to fail.

Thank you for reading this. Thank you for maybe contributing or at least not publicly calling us names. We can’t stop this music thing because it’s a sickness. It doesn’t relent and it doesn’t forgive, but it’s what gives us life. I hope you have something you love as much as we love this. It makes the world a better place. It makes life okay even when you’re openly begging for money. Let’s make some popes cry.